Karmen Turk

During her practice, altogether Karmen has represented clients in human rights, technology and media related cases in more than 300 disputes, including in European Court of Human Rights as well European Court of Justice. For a case heard by European Court of Justice, a highest reward in intellectual property field IP STAR was granted for the team for most important case of the year.

Chambers Europe, Legal500 and Top Ranked have ranked her as recommended practitioner in the field.

Examples of notable cases include:

• Numerous media disputes representing Postimees Grupp AS, Ekspress Grupp AS, Äripäev AS where publishing activities of outlet or journalists are assessed.
• Bolagsupplysningen et Ilsjan, preliminary ruling procedure in the European Union Court of Justice (Grand Chamber).
• Delfi v Estonia regarding the leading listed Estonian media company Delfi in a dispute over liability of intermediaries on the Internet.
• REACT preliminary ruling concerned the question of whether and when, under European Union law, an organisation which is representing trademark proprietors is entitled to bring an action before a court in order to protect the rights of trademark proprietors and matters which were related to the intermediary liability of a bad faith internet service provision.
• Estonian Authors Union versus Viasat, where we successfully represented Viasat AS in a case of pan-European significance about whether satellite service providers need to obtain the authors’ consent or pay remuneration for their activities.
• Providing representation for Äripäev AS in a precedent-setting dispute with Eerik-Niiles Kross.

Karmen is also a visiting lecturer in IT Law at the University of Tartu for subjects of IP as well as human rights in information society. She is also doing her PhD and researching issues regarding new technologies and liabilities of the stakeholders.

She is an expert in the Council of Europe for several sub-committees (e.g. Chair for anti-SLAPP committee, Co-Chair and expert for Intermediary Liability Committee attached to the Council of Europe). Within the framework of UN Internet Governance Forum, she is co-ordinating the Dynamic Coalition of Freedom of Expression and Media on the Internet.

In recent years, her passion has been towards researching legal approach to autonomous and intelligent systems (AI/S, Artificial Intelligence). She was an external member for European Commission’s High-Level Group on Artificial Intelligence (HLEG-AI).

As an expert, she in involved in European Commission and Council of Europe joint projects in strengthening information society in countries such as Ukraine and Moldova, specifically in training judiciary – for example she was a trainer for human rights and media law for joint program of European Union and Council of Europe in Ukraine for development of human rights law course for the National Academy of Judges (with prof. J. Kulezsa and A. Pazniuk).